The foundations of the gaming product, however, are already set and offer glimpses into a fully immersive future in sports gaming.
Kicking
Rezzil’s main priority for Premier League player was to make the game something that would appeal to the general public and not just players who are familiar with the mechanics of football.
“Someone’s grandmother could play him,” says Adam Dickinson, co-founder and design director of Rezzil. “You don’t have to be a sportsman.”
Achieving that accessibility required some compromises, particularly in the game’s kick mechanism: Players “kick” by swinging their arms while holding standard VR controllers at their sides, doing their best to approximate natural leg movements. The default playing foot appears at a 90 degree angle to the leg, as if it were flat on the ground, ideal for making and receiving passes; holding down the activation button flexes the ankle and extends the player’s foot straight, mimicking the ideal position for a stronger shot or volley.
Like all game modes, football drills transport players to the digital pitches of the Premier League. Players are required to kick and receive passes to and from various targets. The simplest settings include “aim assist” and similar player aides that help modulate the speed and direction of the kick, while the higher levels are almost entirely free of these crutches.
Dickinson tells me that Rezzil has already created and tested versions of PLP where players kick with real feet. These versions, however, require additional VR sensors purchased separately from the headset itself; even VR headsets with “inverted” tracking cameras pointing outward still can’t handle the necessary tasks, Etches tells me. Many popular dance or spatial virtual reality games use up to a dozen such sensors to track the entire body, but Dickinson says Rezzil users would only need a couple. But even that additional cost (about $300, Etches says) seemed too prohibitive for the game’s initial launch. By this time next year, expect to be able to kick the virtual ball by moving your real feet.
“We can flip a switch and bring it into play,” Dickinson says.
In their current format, PLP‘s soccer drills are the least realistic. But the other features of the game are much more natural.
Being primarily a goalkeeper in my short time on a youth soccer field, I was particularly passionate about goalkeeping drills. They don’t disappoint. The shots come from a combination of “shooting cannons” created by Rezzil (small objects they can place anywhere on the pitch and programmed to fire balls at various speeds and spin rates) and real 3D renderings of Premier League players, which appear in field in various positions such as the penalty spot and longer free kicks.
